How To Know If Your Job Doesn't Mean Anything

It has often been observed that the future didn't turn out as
predicted. By now, thanks to technology's advance, we were
supposed to be working 15-hour weeks, spending the rest of our
time on great literature, conversation, and leisurely jetpack
trips to the dome-covered shopping mall, to check out the latest
range of 1950s horn-rimmed spectacles. Instead, we're busier than
ever.

But it's worse than that,
according toDavid Graeber,
the anthropology professor credited with helping to launch the
Occupy movement: much of that busyness is completely pointless.
Entire professions, he arguedin a recent essay in Strike magazine, consist of "bullshit jobs" that the
world just doesn't need. If nurses and rubbish collectors
disappeared overnight, we'd be in trouble; but "it's not entirely
clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs,
lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or
legal consultants to similarly vanish". What explains this
proliferation of pointlessness? Graeber concludes, true to his
anarchist beliefs, that it's all about social control. A
population kept busy with bullshit has no time to start a
revolution.

I can already hear the indignant howls from PRs and
telemarketers. (And the telemarketers have my home number. Oops.)
But then I should probably howl, too, given how frequently
surveys show that people think journalists contribute nothing to
society. Who's Graeber to say what jobs are "needed" anyway?
Some would say anarchist anthropologists aren't exactly
essential. Anticipating this response, he poses a different
question: what about people who consider their own jobs
meaningless? "I'm not sure I've ever met a corporate lawyer who
didn't think their job was bullshit," he writes. Get them tipsy
at parties, and many others will speak similarly of their own
work. "There is a profound psychological violence here. How can
one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly
feels one's job should not exist?"

Whether or not you agree with Graeber about the prevalence of
bullshit jobs, it's hard to deny that plenty of jobs involve some
bullshit. One reason we rarely complain about that, I suspect, is
that we're chronically prone to confusing the feeling of putting
in effort with actually getting useful things done. That's why
lifts have "placebo buttons", which make us feel
like we're achieving something when we're not. It's also why an
exhausting day at the office leaves you feeling virtuous – a
"hard worker" – even if you only did busywork. Two good hours on
the important things, followed by an afternoon of TV and eating
Monster Munch, might have been more constructive. But you'd feel
like a skiver, and possibly get fired.

You can easily go too far with all this talk of meaningfulness:
that way lies acres of self-help nonsense about Finding Your Life
Purpose and "doing great work". But Graeber's analysis suggests a
more down-to-earth question for navigating the world
of careers: is the job you're doing, or applying for, one
that the world would be perfectly fine without? (Financial
necessity might still oblige you to do it, but at least you'll be
acting without illusions.) As life strategies go, this seems a
decent one: where possible, move in the direction of
non-pointless activities, and away from those that reek of
bullshit. Do stuff that people would miss – however slightly – if
it never got done at all.